What exactly is the objection to a Danubian origin for IE languages? I don't
believe what George brings up are valid objections.
George wrote:
<<At least Renfrew was more logical than the proponents of a Balkan or
Danubian Urheimat. He did not assume a language shift with the arrival of
agriculture into the Balkans from Anatolia.>>
Well, then, how does one explain "the language shift" with the arrival of
agriculture from the Levant in Sumer, Akkadia or Egypt?
This is NOT a real objection. Obviously, the earliest agriculture spreading
from the Levant and Anatolia would have to had hooked-up with DIFFERENT
language groups, going in different directions - early agriculture is clearly
associated with more than one early language. Which languages it would have
hooked-up with would be accidental. But the fact that these hook-ups were
made seems highly manifest in the spread of those various ancient language
groups, including IE and Semitic.
The Romans were not the only ones to build marble temples nor did they invent
them, but where the Romans went, marble temples went. IE speakers were not
the only ones to domesticate nor did they invent domestication, but where IE
speakers went, domestication went. It's that simple.
Another point is again that *PIE did not fall out of the sky. There had to
have been a pre-agricultural IE "grandfather" language, before *PIE. There's
no specific reason why it could not have been spoken in Anatolia in 7500BC
(see, e.g., Ivanov, Diadonov, et al.), even if *PIE was later spoken on the
Danube.
George wrote:
<<As to the Balkanists. I see at least two problems here. One is that of
explaining the diversity of IE languages in a situation where the farming
communities spreading north, northwest and northeast are all issuing from the
same center, and are maintaining territorial contact with each other.>>
Well, at the beginning, there wouldn't be much diversity. For example,
Germanic speakers were pretty much in constant territorial contact with one
another and it may have taken less than 1500 years from proto-Germanic for
them to show the diversity in English, Frankish, Bavarian and Norse. 5500BC
allows a lot more time for orthodox linguistic diversification than 3500BC.
The large difference between Hittite and Sanskrit is much harder to explain
if you start in the Ukraine in 3500BC.
And by the way, from the Danube, IE/agriculture would ALSO be spreading east.
That's WHY there are cows and sheep, barley and wheat at Dereivka. If you
explain cattle and wheat being on the Dnieper by coming over the Caucasus,
you're going a 1000 miles to get what originated a few hundred miles away.
This is how forced things have to be to create an artificial wall between the
Danube and the Dnieper.
George wrote:
<<The other (and in my view insuperable) problem is that neither LBK nor
Trypilia can explain the rise of the Indo-Iranian (and perhaps of other) IE
speeches in the vast areas east of the Dnipro r. The assumptions required for
this are simply not convincing.>>
The ONLY assumption needed is that what first spread the language WEST also
first spread the language EAST. It just took longer. It's NOT easy at all
to see what your objection is here.
The development of satemization is NOT an obstacle. Gimbutas and Mallory NOT
would support you if you are saying that satemization was NOT a later and
natural development out of an earlier non-satemized IE.
<<This may perhaps be eased by an assumption similar to that of the
Gimbutas/Mallory view, viz., the interaction of colonists with a variety of
mesolithic substrate elements.>>
George, you definitely misunderstand Mallory. The core differentiation in IE
languages is NOT attributed by mainstream linguists to "substrates."
Mallory, definitely adhering to mainstream linguistics, would NOT tell you
that the key differences in IE languages are due to substates. The
mainstream position is that related languages differentiate in their
relatedness by natural and inevitable dialectical change. That change and
splitting-up of languages is to be expected and would be largely only
countered by areal or "state language" effects.
This is important because I know you don't want to misrepresent Mallory. And
because this is NOT a difference between Renfrew and Mallory. If anything,
Renfrew would be more likely to see such things as possible than Mallory.
Finally, there is a bit of irony in finding the Danube hard to believe and
the Dnieper easy to believe, given the distance between the two. And
compared to the immense distances IE would eventually cover. What was the
difference between the Danube and the Dnieper in 5000BC? Was it a whole lot
smaller than the difference in 2002AD? And how much is the latter
differences affecting the interpretation of the former? These are important
questions that I'll try to address sometime later.
Steve